Where The Rainbow Ends

By Anurag Anand

Even the most artistic of imaginings can sometimes seem
callow in the face of truth. That which appears may not be
and that which lies hidden might just be the stark, naked face
of reality.
Rahul had everything going his way – a soaring career, a
happy family and all else a man his age could yearn for.
And then suddenly his life began to crumble all around
him, disintegrating element after precious element, leaving
him to watch in helpless horror.
Where had he gone wrong? Was there still hope for
redemption, even a solitary ray that he could cling on to?
Avantika, a pretty, vivacious girl who had come into Rahul’s
life by pure accident, literally, has suddenly gone missing. Just like that, without as
much as a trace.
Where is Avantika? Will Rahul be able to find her? Is it her own past that has come
back to consume her or is it something even more vicious and sinister?
Shalini, Rahul’s first love and a girl accustomed to leading life on her own terms.
Hailing from a family that exerts considerable influence in the galleries of politics and
power, she certainly has the wherewithal to impact a lot of things. Even lives.
Is Shalini fostering a grudge that could displace not one but many lives? Could she be
the one behind Avantika’s mysterious disappearance?
Where The RAINBOW Ends is a racy page-turner that promises to take you on a
tempestuous and soul-stirring journey which shall remain with you long after you
have put the book down.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Srishti Publishers
• Release date: Oct 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9789382665014

Book preview

Also by Anurag Anand

The Legend of Amrapali

Of Tattoos and Taboos!

Reality Bytes Bites.

The Quest for Nothing!

SRISHTI PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS

N-16, C. R. Park

New Delhi 110 019

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First published by

Srishti Publishers & Distributors in 2013

Copyright © Anurag Anand, 2013

All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental. For authenticity and to aid story telling, the author has used places, organizations and institutions that are real, however, there is no intention to imply anything else.

The author asserts the moral right to be identifited as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publishers.

Typeset by Eshu Graphic

For Naisha,

my little bundle of immeasurable joy

CONTENTS

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Epilogue

From the Author’s Desk

One

Obviously the economic pundits and politicos, who can’t seem to stop raving about Human Capital, deemed to serve as a catapult for propelling India into the coveted league of developed nations, have missed out on a crucial point somewhere. Or perhaps the perks accompanying their V.I.P. statuses have so distanced them from reality that they are able to see an illusionary promise even in the sea of utterly hopeless humanity that surrounds us morning through night.

As far as I go, there isn’t a tinge of optimism I can feel about the sweaty, stinking oaf- a quintal-plus would be my most conservative estimate of his weight – ahead of me, who has been spraying my crotch with poisonous, ill-smelling vapours ever since I joined the queue. Well, perhaps I am being a tad harsh on the fellow who has visibly been betrayed by his own digestive juices, a victim himself, and is clearly in the need for some sympathy and a very strong antacid. But what about the lady there, dragging two defiant and wailing brats as if they were items she had forgotten to check-in? Or that man screaming his guts out into the phone, leaving me in little doubt that the fellow on the other end was either deaf or marooned on an island where the telecom companies were yet to erect towers? If this is the bunch we think will steer us to our promised glories, well, God save Mother India.

Anyway, after being adequately frisked and felt by a perverse-looking member of the airport security staff I was eased into another crammed-to-the-hilt zone - the departure lounge. I glanced at my watch, an Espirit timepiece I had received as a gift on my last birthday. Forty minutes, I still had forty long minutes to kill before boarding. Hopefully!

I glanced around for an empty seat (realising delightfully that my supply of optimism hadn’t entirely waned) and not finding even a single one, settled for leaning against a vending machine to unfold the newspaper I had been clutching. I had plenty of things playing on my mind and knowing myself for as long as I had, 34 years to be precise, I couldn’t allow my thoughts to run amok and distract me from my immediate objective of boarding the plane.

In contradiction to the horrific tales of delayed departures I had heard, the boarding was announced on time and we were herded inside the craft. I had been allotted an aisle seat. And thankfully the man preceding me in the check-in queue was now separated from me by at least five rows of well-padded seats. Some benevolent soul had saved my nasal glands from certain torture and potential impairment, and I could only close my eyes in a silent expression of gratitude.

The cabin crew comprised all of three people - a young man and two women, all in their early twenties or thereabouts. It was a budget carrier after all, and for the sake of sound commerce they had to make do with the minimum possible headcount. I can appreciate the perspective of the airline management, but the three poor souls designed to bear the strategy’s brunt were having somewhat harrowing a time.

Stuffing ill-sized baggage into overhead compartments while passengers waited on them with an aura of aristocracy, as if the flight ticket entitled them to a brief stint of feudality, and scurrying about to deliver water bottles to impatient travellers, the crew members were getting a taste of reality that doesn’t usually find its way into the airline hiring brochures. Cattle class, wasn’t that the term an esteemed statesman had bestowed upon this phenomenon? How apt, but only if one ignored the minor subtlety that the remark eventually resulted in his ouster from office (or was it resignation, a more responsible but equally baffling act, considering we are a democracy that guarantees everyone the right of expression).

As the plane began to crawl, crew members took their positions, demonstrating how to efficiently buckle and unbuckle a seat-belt and other such. One of them, whose name I read on her breast-plate, Rochelle, was standing right in front of me and mechanically going about her duties. I glanced at her with comical curiosity, wondering how she endured a task of such insipid nature without as much as a frown on her face, my gaze lingering for just a wee bit longer than intended. A genial smile was affixed on her face-a cultivated facade to conceal her private self from those she met during the course of her work.

She was just like Her. Or maybe she wasn’t. Who am I trying to fool here? Had it been the other hostess and not Rochelle who was in the periphery of my vision, would I have stopped from drawing parallels then? The answer is no. My mind, and more so my heart, needed an excuse, no matter how feeble, to begin thinking about Avantika, and Rochelle had served precisely that purpose.

Instantly I was drawn to the day I had first met Avantika, a day that could be traced back by eight calendar months, which now seemed like another lifetime altogether. It was another flight, a premium carrier instead of the budget one I was sitting in now.

Back then my life had been racing on a completely different track. I was among the privileged few, financially at least – a bright corporate executive with a promising career ahead of him, a stud among mules, a man who did not have to endure the travails of travelling cattle class. Though the nature of my travel had been personal, my frequent work-related jaunts had left me with enough reward miles to book myself a business class ticket on my preferred airline.

After disembarking from the coach – a business class exclusive, mind you – I had walked to my seat with the usual arrogance and gait of the privileged, acknowledging greetings from the crew members with only a genial nod. I wasn’t wearing a jacket, so when one of the stewards rushed to appease me by helping me with my overnighter instead, I gladly allowed him the pleasure, turning to carefully pick a business magazine from the pile ahead.

The plane was airborne soon and I engrossed myself in figuring out the possible good that could emerge from the elitist tea party underway in Davos, Switzerland, under the garb of The World Economic Forum meeting. Then suddenly, without a warning, a splash of cold liquid, followed by something human tearing its way through the magazine to land in my lap, left me startled and drenched.

‘Oh shit,’ both of us blurted out at the same time. She was a girl, one of the crew members, and though I had missed witnessing the action, I could guess that she had been carrying a glass of water (thankfully it wasn’t orange juice or something) and had tripped, only to deposit the glass, its contents and her own self on me.

It was filmy alright, the occurrence, but nothing of the sort that Bollywood love flicks thrive on happened between us. And when our eyes met, while she struggled to detach herself from my lap, instead of the three blinks and a blush one is accustomed to seeing on the big screen, I only saw embarrassment in them. Not to mention the angry fumes gushing out of my own ears. You might not understand the intensity of my anger now, but then, you were not the one feeling the chill and the tickle from a stream of water carving its way down your underpants.

‘Sorry… Sir,’ she murmured. And even before I could voice my annoyance, she said, ‘I will get you some tissues,’ and darted out of my sight. In the little time it took me to survey the damage, she was back with the promised tissues, a whole bunch of them. I looked at her face – totally intent on giving her a piece of my mind – and our eyes met once again, her lips curling into a polite smile. No, it wasn’t love at first sight, but the smile did dissuade me from my intended course of action.

‘It is alright… Avantika,’ I said, glancing at her nameplate and averting my gaze almost instantaneously. Undoubtedly the man who had first decided on the site for pinning nameplates was either a moron or a pervert of unmatched proportions. Why else would someone come up with an idea whereby the simple and chaste act of attempting to read a girl’s name could leave a well-meaning man misunderstood and, if luck wasn’t on his side, thrashed to tatters?

I grabbed the tissues, turning down her offer to help me wipe the residual water off my clothing, and got down to dealing with the task myself.

My apologies, if I have set your expectations soaring unintentionally; but nothing much transpired between us on that flight, nothing of significance at least. Only exchange of casual glances and knowing smiles, as though we were accomplices in some sort of a covert intelligence operation. And of course, the warm farewell she dished out to me as I disembarked from the plane, which I thought was different from the mechanical goodbyes she was doling out to other flyers, did well to make up for the mishap I had been on the receiving end of. Well, I can’t rule out the possibility that she was only going about her usual routine and it was me who was being overly perceptive, but then, what the heck.

However, if you thought that Avantika’s chapter was closed from my life, you, like I had been then, are highly mistaken. It was a Saturday, three days after my return from Delhi, and Avantika happened to be the last thing on my mind. Truth be told, I had allowed myself a few flattering smiles thinking about Avantika and the connection we had apparently established over a moment of slight misfortune, but that was only during my way back home from the airport. My life, once it reclaimed me, was in a state of adequate turmoil for my mind to push Avantika and her thoughts into one of its remotest recesses.

The day hadn’t begun on a particularly pleasant note even though it fell within the eagerly awaited crevice separating two working weeks. Myra, my five-year-old daughter had woken up with slight fever and a headache. Our residential maid, my only support as far as looking after Myra was concerned, was visiting her village and the replacement she had helped arrange had unceremoniously decided to not turn up. Resultantly, a better part of my morning had gone in tending to a very cranky Myra and cussing the entire species of maids under my breath for heartlessly exploiting and ever so frequently holding us to ransom.

It was after I had successfully relegated hundreds of Shantabais and Kantabais to the deepest, darkest dungeons of hell that I thought of putting to test Myra’s genetic construct. A movie (some random animation flick I had been desperately trying to avoid) and an ice-cream promised, and she began to exhibit instant signs of recovery. She was my daughter indeed, receptive and responsive to the right set of incentives.

Myra loves escalators, like most other children her age. And kids, as you might have noticed, sometimes have the strangest reasons behind their likes and dislikes. It wasn’t the convenience of being carried up or down mall floors without moving one’s limb that interested her, but a strange game of balance she had come up with, to my utmost detestation of course. She enjoyed running against the steady rhythm of the escalator, using it as a treadmill of sorts, trying to match her speed so the escalator would fail in its assigned task of ferrying her.

That day too she had brightened up at the sight of the escalator and got engaged in her silly game instantly. I did not resist, partly because she hadn’t been keeping well and partly since the mall wasn’t crowded yet and she was unlikely to stall other visitors with her act. When I was nearing the landing, she was still somewhere down the middle, holding up against the mechanical forces propelling her opponent.

‘Beta, hurry or we will miss the movie,’ I barked.

I had turned to glance at her in a bid to make my words sound more persuasive and that proved my undoing. I crashed into something (someone, to be precise) and went tumbling down the floor. I wasn’t alone. I had company even in that moment of extreme embarrassment. There was someone I was entangled with, a human body – evidently the very individual I had crashed into and taken down with me. My landing had been safe, away from the stirring escalator, and once I had ascertained that my hands and feet were all in place, I made an attempt to get up.

Ignoring wicked smiles from other shoppers and the impish chuckle of Myra, who, by now, had terminated her game in favour of the more entertaining spectacle, I got to my feet. And that was when I saw her. Believe it or not, standing in front of me, dishevelled due to the sudden crash and bang, was Avantika, the air hostess who had left me all wet and soaking only a few days back.

‘I am sorry…,’ she said, and then she saw me. ‘You!’ she exclaimed as a flicker of recognition emerged in her eyes.

‘Hello to you too,’ I responded with a smile. She smiled back. And then, abruptly, as if on the same cue, we burst out laughing. It was a coincidence alright, but someone up there surely had a funny bone and had set this act up perfectly.

‘Well, now that you have exacted your revenge, will you please stop stalking me?’ she said. ‘I mean, I thought you had forgiven me for the accident the other day. I never realised it had offended you so much that you would track me down and do this,’ she explained, her hand swaying back a little to point at the exact spot we had landed. I laughed once again. ‘By the way, I am Avantika.’

‘I know. I am Rahul … Rahul Singh,’ I replied, extending my hand for her to shake.

‘And I am Myra … Myra Singh,’ I heard, as a small hand emerged from under my outstretched one and reached out towards her. ‘My daughter,’ I added for Avantika’s benefit.

‘Hi Myra,’ she said, bending down to touch her cheeks. ‘You know, other than your father and you, there is another person who likes to offer his introductions in a similar fashion. Bond… James Bond. Ever heard of him?

Avantika was wearing a white cotton dress with olive and saffron floral prints. Her shoulder-length hair had been left loose and she looked very different from the time I had last seen her. Somewhat pale and pinched, due to the missing coat of makeup perhaps, but pretty nevertheless. I wondered how I had managed to recognise her despite her drastically altered appearance. Instantly the thought branched away into another. How did she manage to recognise me? We had met just once in the past and not in a setting ideal for people to remember each other. Was there a chance that she had been thinking about me too? I allowed myself an indulgent smile. Maybe she was. Who knows?

We began walking together, all three of us. Myra and Avantika were already chatting as if they were long lost friends meeting each other after ages - a girl-thing of forging instantaneous bonds that I wasn’t, by the sheer virtue of my gender, programmed to comprehend.

‘You stay somewhere close by?’ I asked her when the first opportunity to talk came my way.

‘No, I don’t stay here. In fact I don’t even stay in Mumbai. I am from Delhi,’ she said. ‘I was here visiting a colleague for the weekend, but she was summoned to work at the last minute. Some unexpected absenteeism in her team I guess, and since I was left alone, I decided to come here and catch a movie. I am watching….’

‘Wow, we are also watching the same movie. We can all see it together,’ Myra nearly screamed in excitement. Her invitation for Avantika was more a statement than a request and neither of us had the heart to oppose it.

‘I have a compelling reason to endure this crap,’ I said to Avantika, looking at Myra from the corner of my eye while waiting for the counter clerk to print the three tickets. ‘But why would you deliberately want to subject yourself to an hour and half of torture?’

‘All of us have a child within us, don’t we? Let’s just say that I like listening to that child more than I like listening to the adult me.’ Turning to Myra, she added with a wink, ‘Plus, not everybody is blessed with a refined taste in entertainment, right?’ Next, the two were exchanging high-fives and I could do nothing but watch my own daughter conspire against me with someone she had only just met.

An over-smart canine singing and wooing bitches from the neighbourhood might be somebody’s idea of entertainment, but I wasn’t impressed. I agree, it was the producer’s own money (or of someone he had managed to beguile into investing in the film) that was flowing down the sewers, but I had paid seven hundred and fifty bucks for the tickets and thus had fairly and squarely acquired the rights to voice my dissent.

However, both Myra and Avantika appeared to think otherwise. They were chit-chatting and breaking into abrupt spells of giddy laughter in a manner that could mislead one into believing that the film was worthy of being showcased in an international film festival. Their superlative elation even led me to a moment of self-doubt, but one look at the empty seats around us and the doubt was quickly dispelled.

The movie eventually concluded, a happy ending with the protagonist getting together with the bitch of his choice (like I was expecting anything else to happen), and we headed to a coffee shop. The suggestion had been mine since I desperately needed a shot of caffeine to clear the garbage from my mind. As we took the first sips of our cappuccinos, our eyes met, Avantika’s and mine, and I felt a shiver run down my spine. I couldn’t tell what it was, but I felt as if she could see right through me – an uneasy feeling, as if she could count the small change in my pockets and read my thoughts too, even as they were being relayed.

But Myra was quick to reclaim her new-found friend by offering her a sip of her milkshake, thereby putting my awkwardness to rest, but not before it had stirred something deep within me. I was suddenly inquisitive. I wanted to talk to Avantika, know more about her, but it was only an exchange of phone numbers I could manage during our first real meeting.

This chance-meeting proved a stepping-stone to a confusing relationship that we embarked upon – Avantika, Myra and me. Every time she was in Mumbai, a frequent occurrence